Splash Damage Blog

RAD Soldiers Community Q&A #1

Submitted by badman on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 16:16

Hello and welcome to the first RAD Soldiers Community Q&A, where we answer your burning questions about the game. Incidentally, if this is the first time you're hearing of RAD Soldiers, we suggest checking out the announcement trailer immediately, which'll give you a pretty good idea of what the game is all about.

Today's questions cover the game's art style, unlocks, combat classes, and the inner workings of the turn-based multiplayer mode, among other things. Without further ado, let's dive right in:

How did the art style for RAD Soldiers come about?(submitted by tangoliber)

The art style was very much a collaborative effort from a few people at Splash Damage, and it had to meet several requirements for the game:

We knew early on that we wanted the game to be in 3D, not only because of the visual fidelity, but also because we wanted players to be able to easily spin the camera around, and zoom in and out of the battlefield.

We also wanted a style that played to the strength of the platforms. Your average phone can’t quite push as many polygons as your average PC just yet, so we went for a very angular look, fully embracing lower polycounts for characters and environments by exaggerating everything and making that part of the game’s overall art style.

The character animations very much adhere to this too – everything from movement to idle animations to the various attacks is just a little over the top, so it’s a very fun game to watch as well.

Will the visuals in RAD Soldiers support the higher resolution of new iPad?(submitted by Pi_Mai)

Yes! RAD Soldiers will take full advantage of the new iPad’s Retina Display for that extra bit of sharpness.

Click to enlargeAre there classes? How do Action Points work?(submitted by Dormamu)

Characters have various amounts of Action Points available to them based on their body type and a few other attributes. For example, heavy characters can move less in terms of AP points but have more health, whereas light characters work the other way around. The medium body type sits somewhere in between.

On top of that, each Character is also a member of one of four combat classes – Soldier, Medic, Engineer, and Agent – giving them that class’s defining ability. For example, Medics can heal and Engineers can repair friendly turrets and disarm mines. In addition, each character also has a second ability that is completely unique to that character, like remote controlled charges or special types of grenades. Once you start mixing and matching different characters in your squad, you can get some very interesting combinations going.

How do the unlocks work?(submitted by SockDog)

When you first start RAD Soldiers, you’ll have a small number of characters available to choose from for your squad. This’ll let you find your feet in the game and get a feel for the different character classes, weapons, and body types. As you play, you’ll earn XP and coins, which you can then spend to unlock additional characters and weapons that suit your playing style as well as the kinds of tactics you’re looking to unleash on your unsuspecting opponents.

In addition, your squad leader (commander) also gains additional abilities as you level up, and can bring them into the battlefield further increasing the amount of tactical options available to you.

Let’s be clear here – you can unlock anything that actually affects gameplay without having to pay any real money. This is very important to us, especially since so many free-to-play games tend to fall into the pay-to-win trap, where those who spend money get better equipment than those who elect not to. That said, you can spend money to purchase outfits and other cosmetic features for your characters to personalize them and really make them your own when you take them into battle.

Of course, with so many unlockables, balancing is a huge concern. In RAD Soldiers, one way we’re achieving this is through Squad Points. Each character takes up a certain amount of Squad Points based on their weapon load-out, so more powerful characters use up more Squad Points, while weaker characters use up less. Whenever you start a new match, you get to set the maximum amount of Squad Points available to either player. This directly controls the amount and strength of squad members they can bring in, and through that, influences the length of the match as well.

Whether you’re feeling like an epic showdown where anything goes or a more intimate game with very small teams, you can quickly and easily make that happen thanks to the Squad Point system.

Click to enlargeHow does the turn-based multiplayer work? Do both teams move their pieces at the same time each phase?(submitted by Tokamak)

In RAD Soldiers, both players take alternating turns – in other words, Player 1 makes their move, submits it to Player 2, Player 2 has their go, and so on. If you’ve played Words with Friends, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how this works in practice. Since you’ll probably have multiple games going on at the same time, you’ll always get a short replay at the beginning of your turn to catch you up on the other player’s nefarious doings.

Can you have multiple multiplayer games going on at the same time? Is there support for split screen or pass and play?(submitted by Pi_Mai)

Multiplayer is turn-based, so it’s perfect for getting a move in whenever you have a bit of time – be it during your morning commute, your lunch break, or even while standing in a queue somewhere. We fully expect players to have multiple matches going at the same time and we’ve made it really easy to hop in and out of matches for that reason. When you start up the game, you’ll see a list of all of your current multiplayer games, with those that are waiting for you to take your turn at the top of the list.

In addition to this, we have also been working on a pass and play mode for those wanting to play with a friend using a single device. While Pass and Play likely won’t be finished in time for the initial release, we’re currently planning to add this mode in a future update.

Click to enlargeWill I able to play with/against friends using a different iDevice (such as iPad vs. iPod Touch vs. iPhone)?(submitted by Metal-Geo)

Thanks to Fireteam, we’re able to use a single, unified back-end to drive all of RAD Soldiers. That means you can play the game against anyone who’s also got it, no matter which device they’re using.

Even better, since our accounts system is unified across the game and our websites, you can just use your existing WarChest / Splash Damage website account when you log into the game. If you haven’t got an account yet and want to make reserve your nickname before anyone else does, now’s the time to register!

Will RAD Soldiers come to any platforms other than iOS?(submitted by SockDog)

RAD Soldiers is our very first mobile game, so we’re taking things one platform at a time. Since the announcement, we’ve had a huge amount of requests for Android and browser versions, and we’re keenly aware of the demand there is for that. Right now, though, we’re fully focused on iOS and making RAD Soldiers as fun as we can for release and we can’t wait to get it out there for everyone to play!

That's it for the first instalment of our RAD Soldiers Community Q&A. If you have a question about the game you'd like to be answered, post it in the RAD Soldiers Questions thread in our forums.

RAD Soldiers is coming to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch this Summer. You can reserve your nickname now by registering a free account (if you've already got a website account, you're all set).